Boom-Boom
by James Tate
A man and a woman meet in an alley. They kiss
but they don't really know one another. You smell
like violets, he says putting his hand on her breast.
You're strong, she says rubbing herself on his thigh.
He runs his hands through her hair and pulls her tighter
to him. I must have you, he says. Yes, I want to
make love to you, she says touching him between his
legs. Yes, you must give up your treasure to fruc-
tify the crops, he says. Oh yes, I want to fructify
very much, she says. The crops, I mean.
This poem is one of my favorites, because it manages to do something that I feel is very difficult: it introduces humor, and it does so rather unexpectedly.
NaPoWriMo: April is National Poetry Writing Month!
I personally am not given to writing comic verse, but it is a long-standing tradition. Sometimes witty, sometimes uproarious, sometimes just plain odd, a good comic piece can transfer a genuine sense of connection from writer to reader.
One famous American comic lyricist is Ogden Nash. Known for his light verse, he tended to write in metrical feet and rhyme which, when done with humor in mind, can lend itself to heightening the effect. Here is some of his work.
Samson Agonistes
I test my bath before I sit,
And I’m always moved to wonderment
That what chills the finger not a bit
Is so frigid upon the fundament.
The Perfect Husband
He tells you when you’ve got on
too much lipstick
And helps you with your girdle
when your hips stick.
Reflection On The Fallibility Of Nemesis
He who is ridden by a conscience
Worries about a lot of nonscience;
He without benefit of scruples
His fun and income soon quadruples.
Reflections On Ice-Breaking
Candy
Is dandy
But liquor
Is quicker.
One of Nash’s contemporaries was Dorothy Parker, quite famous in her heyday. One of the most recognizable ditties of the twentieth century came from her pen.
Resumé
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
Stephen Dobyns, in
Next Word, Better Word (pp. 76-77), imparts some wisdom about how meter and stress, and also how the use of such might be utilized for humor.
In poetry written in English, whether formal or free, one always deals with the relationship of stressed and unstressed syllables. One can’t avoid it; it’s built into the language. … [T]he relationship between stressed and unstressed syllables can have an emotional dynamic—in a stream of syllables the accented syllables tend to be more affective than unaccented syllables.
[...]
This indicates that a plain binary opposition of unstressed/stressed, short/long, high/low, and rough/smooth may work in
prosodic analysis, but it is a simplification that can lead us to misread a poem. There are more than two degrees of stress. Computerized audio analyses have shown there can be hundreds. But in discussing syllables I want to use the Trager-Smith system . . . which argues for four degrees of stress—primary, secondary, tertiary, and weak—noted 1-2-3-4, with 1 being the primary stress. This system is also an abstraction, and we could use three or five or ten degrees of stress, but the Trager-Smith system has worked well for some sixty years, and its four degrees will suit us for now.
As you may imagine, a syllable combination of weak and primary, 4—1, creates a lot of emphasis . . . while if the 4—1 pattern is repeated, it creates a casual or comic tone.
If you scan (count and characterize) the stresses of Nash’s and Parker’s verse, you’ll see that they comport with this 4—1 scansion, which leads to an innate sense of movement, much like a child feels when skipping along the sidewalk. This produces its own element of pleasure, which when overlaid with the message creates a full effect that can bring laughter or a satisfactory sense of surprise.
Your mission for today: Write a humorous piece! This needn’t be long—indeed, many comic verses are
couplets or
quatrains, something pithy and often ascerbic. Remember the spectrum of humor is large: silliness and nonsense lie on the same span as sarcasm, sardonics and gallows humor.
➡ IN CASE YOU MISSED THEM:
- National Poetry Writing Month: an invitation | NaPoWriMo: a short exercise
- NaPoWriMo, Day 2: Telling a Secret | NaPoWriMo, Day 3: Still Life
- NaPoWriMo, Day 4: One out of many | NaPoWriMo, Day 5: Hanging together
- NaPoWriMo, Day 6: Home and introspection | NaPoWriMo, Day 7: Like this or that...
- NaPoWriMo, Day 8: No more short shrift | NaPoWriMo, Day 9: Poem as voicebox
- NaPoWriMo, Day 10: Caught between the horns
- NaPoWriMo, Day 11: Living in the spaces in-between
- NaPoWriMo, Day 12: What’s the occasion?